Developing Sobriety and Healthy Sexuality:

1. Pick an extended period of celibacy.  The top priority for most addicts is to experience a period of celibacy.  Celibacy helps the person clear out unmanageability, to feel more alive again, and to reclaim repressed memories. How do you feel about NOT using pornography for the time of our counselling?
2. Be patient with yourself.  Gentleness, kindness, and self-care are watchwords.  To change after time of compulsion is a huge task, and you will make mistakes.    Because addiction is an abuse – loving ourselves is very important!
3. Accept yourself as a sexual person.  Sexuality and sobriety are, as another addict advised, "possible, and not a contradiction in terms... sex is not dirty and shameful."  You must distinguish between your addiction and your sexuality.  Sobriety is about addiction, not about sexuality.  Your sexuality is to be embraced, not denied.
4. Work on boundaries.  Boundaries give you clarity about your sexual self and help to reduce shame.  As guidelines, they serve as a bulwark against denial, obsessive thinking, and relapse.
5. Keep others current.  Always keep others in your program informed about happenings in your sexual life.  When in doubt or when confronting something new, check it out.  Have no secrets, and avoid becoming isolated.
6. Understand that things will change.  Your vision of your sexuality will change dramatically with time in recovery.  You will need to allow yourself that process.
7. Accept the imperfect.  The search for perfection in relationships and sex cause many addicts to discard relationships before they recognized their potential.  The search was futile and the losses real.

 Resisting Addictive Cravings – Change your focus:

1. Develop Spiritual Strategies.  Whatever strategies you choose to help you connect with yourself and the rhythm of the universe — meditation, yoga, or prayer, for example — needs to be deepened, strengthened and practiced.  Number one on almost everyone's list is the development of a spiritual base — a calm center which helps you resist turmoil on the periphery.
2. Decode feelings.  Sex that is about addiction and not sexuality is usually accomplished by feelings of shame, loneliness, fear, pain, and anger.  Always check for these feelings.  Remember that to act out a feeling sexually does not resolve that feeling.   If you cannot decode your feeling, consult with a therapist, or a group member.  Remember the old Twelve-Step aphorism: Horniness equals loneliness.
3. Avoid trigger situations.  Identify situations, persons, and circumstances that can trigger addictive responses.  Respect your powerlessness, and avoid those triggers.  Remember, when in doubt, don't.                                                                                How do you think you can avoid your triggers on the NET?
4. Forgive yourself for slips.  If a slip occurs, turn it into a learning experience.  Be gentle with yourself.  Your shame will cause you to beat up on yourself, and that will make you even more vulnerable.
5. Work on nurturing yourself.  Exercise.  Walk.  Eat well.  Rest.  Enjoy a massage, baths, and safe indulgences.  Seek out nature, music, art, humour, and the companionship of good friends.  Find time to take care of yourself.   Make your living space a cocoon for your transformation.  You deserve this treatment.
6. Avoid keeping cravings secret.  Keeping your cravings secret will add to their power.  When you feel like acting out, go to people you trust so you are not alone.  In general, secrets are about shame, and shame always makes you more vulnerable.   Secrets will keep you from others in recovery.
7. Find alternative passions.  Seek hobbies, sports, and activities you enjoy.  Cultivate these parts of your life so compulsive patterns in working, obsessing, or acting out compete with activities and interests that are rewarding.  Alternative passions become new arenas for growth.
8. Acknowledge your choice.  Avoid the feeling that you are a victim.  You are powerless about your addiction, but you are in charge of your recovery program and your lifestyle.  In most areas, you have the choice which can help you achieve the balance needed in your life.  Be proactive instead of reactive by acknowledging to yourself and to others what your choices are:
9. Abstinence (partial or total):  We get support and growth by abstaining from people, places or things that we consider harmful.  Early in recovery a period of total sexual abstinence is a benefit; without abstinence, recovery is impossible.  Some people call this a period of celibacy.  Later abstinence will come to mean abstaining from your bottom line behaviours (behaviours that you are intend to STOP).
10. Acceptance:  Accept that you are a sex and love addict.  Don't blame yourself for failures, but don't give in either.  There is no room in recovery for guilt and shame, as they perpetuate the shame spiral that often feeds our very addiction.  Guilt is when we feel we've done something bad.  Shame is when we feel that we are bad.  Both of these attitudes need to be addressed head-on in recovery.  Recovery provides us an opportunity to change our behaviours.
11. Affirmations:  Daily affirmations are a way of retraining "old thoughts" of low self-esteem.  Visit http://www.anonymityone.com/daily.htm (and keep clicking refresh or reload) for a never-ending supply of affirmations.
12. Balance:  Balancing your life is important.  To help build balance in your life and relationships, each day remember to develop personal relationships with people other than your partner.  Engage in pleasure, education, rest, creativity, spiritual involvement, and play.  Becoming compulsive about recovery does not make you sober and healthy; it merely substitutes another compulsion.
13. Deep breathing:  If you feel a panic attack coming on, try taking slow deep breaths until sanity begins to return.  Try other healing physical activities like soaking in a hot bath, looking in a mirror and saying "I love you" or other affirmations, or repeating the Serenity Prayer.
14. Honesty:  Work to eliminate denial, half truths, white lies, fibs, partial truths and overt dishonesty with ourselves and others.
15. Humour:  "Laughter is the best medicine" is true.  Never take yourself too seriously.  Enjoy a healthy comedy movie or TV show when you feel down.
16. Journaling:  Writing provides a way to become honest with ourselves and our Higher Power.  By writing in journals, gratitude lists, letters and emails we can measure our progress, values, motives, and Twelve Step work.  Record your thoughts, feelings, and insights.  This can be an enormous help in developing and repairing your relationship with yourself.  This also serves to show later how short-term our feelings can be.
17. Live in the moment:  "One Day at a Time" as we often say.  The thought of making a pledge to never act out sexually again can be discouraging and overwhelming.  It's important not to worry about the past or project the future, just stay in the moment.  If necessary, take it one hour or even one minute at a time.  If you become overwhelmed by tasks to be accomplished, make yourself a list of things to do.  Keep them small and simple.  Tasks that can be accomplished in five minutes or less can be as rewarding as major long-term tasks, especially in that moment of confusion and bewilderment.  Be mindful when your attention is not in the moment.  When your mind dwells in the future or the past, you can do nothing.  Remember, the only time you can ever do anything is right now.
18. People, Places and Things:  Choose to avoid all triggering situations, or make them safe if you can't avoid them.  You don't have to go to business meetings at nude bars.  You can tell the others that going to such places interfere with your spiritual growth.  If you can't avoid some triggers such as working on a computer, make it safe for yourself.  Install blocking software (so that you don't know the password), keep your door open, turn the screen toward the door, put the computer at home in a public area, never go online when you are alone.  You can figure out the details.  Avoiding triggers is respecting your own boundaries.
19. Physical Activity:  Spend time doing fun activities, and get involved in sports, exercise, and other physical activities.  This is useful for all addicts and particularly important for those who became sedentary with their addictions.  No matter what the activity (even cleaning) releases natural endorphins in the brain which help us feel healthy.
20. Prayer and Meditation:  Prayer and meditation are a means of establishing a conscious contact with a Power greater than ourselves, for spiritual healing.  Regular spiritual practices help us connect with our Higher Power, which strengthens our recovery.  There is a website (http://worldprayers.org) with worldwide prayers and meditations.  It is important to explore whatever beliefs you have in a power greater than yourself.  This may be God as you know God through your religious beliefs or values.  Your higher power may be nature, the energy of the universe, your 12 Step group, or any other thing that is greater than you are.  There are no religious requirements or beliefs necessary for recovery.  Some people have either lost their spirituality before coming to recovery and some have never had any spiritual beliefs.  In recovery you may experience a new or reawakened spiritual feeling.  Some of these awakened feelings may challenge your religious upbringing.  Be open-minded.  Pray for help from your Higher Power — as you understand it or don't understand it.  Particularly effective is the Serenity Prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."  In emergency situations, some of us use it as a mantra, saying it over and over till the crisis passes
21. Recovery Plan:  A recovery plan is a pre-determined way of expressing our sexuality consistent with our values, so that even when confused, we have a written guideline to help us.  In defining our own sobriety, we make a list of all of our acting out behaviours.  Making this list is very specific and is followed by a solemn commitment to yourself not to engage in those behaviours.  We choose, one day and one situation at a time, not to engage in those behaviours.  Set your bottom lines; discuss your bottom lines; know your bottom lines; observe your bottom lines.  Read over your sexual recovery plan frequently.  Remembering our goals helps us lose the craving to go back to the anguish and confusion we are beginning to ease out of.  Most recovery plans include personal boundaries in addition to bottom lines from which we completely abstain.  Boundaries are the "slippery" slopes that can became blurred or even non-existent when we were in our sexual addiction.  Part of recovery is identifying appropriate boundaries or limits with respect to people, places and activities.  For example, we might choose to set a boundary regarding keeping company with people who continue in their addictions.  This is self-protective and healthy.  When we were in our addiction there was nothing we would not do and nothing we felt we could not or should not do.  Now, in recovery, we must set boundaries to keep ourselves healthy and safe.  There is no right or wrong way to write a recovery plan for yourself.  Some members benefit by seeing an existing plan in use.  Here are two members' plans: One Two; and we will gladly post additional ones that members wish to submit.
22. Relationships:  Dating is a way of changing the instant gratification habit and getting to know more about ourselves and another person, before committing to any sexual decisions.  We let go of self-serving power and prestige as driving motives.
23. Reminders:  Simple reminders can often be a powerful way to stay sober.  For instance, posting small signs or post-its with affirmations or healthy reminders near your computer, your bathroom mirror, your car's interior, or wherever you want to be "reminded" can be a gentle nudge to staying on the path of recovery.
24. Top Lines: Replace Behaviours with Healthy Ones:  Break the habit pattern.  We can't get sober in a vacuum.  We can't simply stop destructive behaviour.  We have to replace it with healthy new activities.  Often we have to be as compulsive for a time about sobriety as we were about acting out.  Try taking creative actions you've never taken before. Prove to yourself you are capable of healthy actions by taking them.  "In maintaining my sobriety, I find it more useful to keep in mind what I call my top line rather than my bottom line.  My top line is what I do want for myself, my program goals.  I want to integrate myself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually; to relate to others from a state of wholeness; to live making decisions from a place of freedom and clarity rather than compulsion and confusion; to feel sufficiently safe to stay open enough to find the little realities of life moving, rather than needing to get dropped off a cliff to get a thrill.  I want to be present, see things the way they are, and be glad to be alive.  These things are beginning to happen for me." — ©1986 Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous p. 270